Taking a Virtual Red Pen to Iraq Report

By Neal 

In one of the first projects from his new desk at Lapham’s Quarterly, Lewis Lapham has teamed up with the Institute for the Future of the Book to publish an online version of the Iraq Study Group Report…but unlike the PDF versions that have previously been made available online, this one is going to have all sorts of notes in the virtual margins from left-wing commentators. For example, radical historian Howard Zinn deconstructs the rejection of “precipitate withdrawal”, noting that “the weak criticism of the Bush policy… reminds us of the criticism of our Vietnam policy, made by ‘liberal’ political figures, which, by foreclosing the idea of withdrawal from Vietnam, helped keep the war going and the casualties piling up for years.” Other annotators include Christian Science Monitor columnist Helena Cobban and former Harper’s editor Matthew Stevenson; more are expected to leave their mark in the future, with the general public getting an opportunity to sound off at some point in January.